The use of electronic mail (email) and attachments has grown substantially over the last few decades. Unfortunately, so have the problems of identity verification, security, privacy and proof of delivery; not to mention all the spam, viruses, and other harmful malware which has become the norm with using the popular, everyday email systems like Hotmail, AOL, Gmail and even Outlook. And, most use the “very public and very vulnerable” Internet as their worldwide network.
Millions of these international email users receive emails and attachments from people they do not know or from people they are not certain as to whether “they are who they say they are”. The challenge is how does a recipient determine the legitimacy or know the true intentions of the sender in the world of the “Unvetted Public Internet”. Before a user opens their latest emails and/or attachments, they pause and worry; even when the senders' names are familiar to them, like a friend or their local banker. The questions—“is that really you?” and “what are your intentions?” haunts every recipient as they decide to either open or delete the latest entries in their Inbox. And, as spam filters try to assist, they often catch the good emails (with the bad) that users do want, causing them to continually review the contents of the spam log to identify and retrieve them for normal viewing.
Even the senders of emails worry and wonder if what they send gets to the right location or to the intended person, especially when exchanging important (e.g., confidential), high-value email messages and files. When the user hits the “send” button they are not certain that their message is secure, private, or if it gets to their named recipient or falls into the hands of an unintended recipient. Many emails never get to their intended recipient (for a variety of reasons) and that both the sender and recipient are never notified of that fact? In addition, if proof of delivery is important, how can senders prove the email got to the right location, the intended recipient and whether it was viewed and/or downloaded by the correct person? Or, might it have gone to, or been intercepted by, someone maliciously pretending to be the recipient? Or, might the recipient say they never received it when they actually did? All it takes these days in most everyday email systems is to know someone's User ID and password and they can wreak havoc in their personal or professional lives, or even cause the demise of a publicly traded company if insider information (within an email message) is stolen or intercepted by those not intended to see such confidential information. For more sophisticated intruders, many other tools and techniques are available to intercept and disrupt a supposedly-private communication.
Some earlier (so-called) certified email efforts have produced companies that have tried to provide certification services (to prove the trustworthiness of the senders). But, they do so within the low-security infrastructure of the popular, everyday email systems like Hotmail, AOL, Gmail and Outlook and the “very public and very vulnerable” Internet they use as their worldwide network. Plus, they allow marketing companies to become users of their service, which then try to give their mass number of recipients the feeling that their emails are worthy of opening. So, the sender of certified email in this environment may not have included a virus or malware in it, but it is still “junk mail” (a.k.a. unwanted spam) if it was unsolicited.
As a result, millions of senders and recipients worldwide spend billions of dollars each year to exchange “paper documents” via FedEx, UPS, Certified Postal Mail, and other international package delivery services; often simply to insure that the documents get there and to have some way of proving it. Although, these services simply get their package to “an adult at the address specified”, and make no guaranteed (or effort) to get it to the person named on the delivery form. Such delivery concerns, even minimally resolved, are causing senders and recipients to endure these substantial expenses and time delays. Many of these same documents could easily be exchanged electronically in their everyday email systems, but they require 1) recipient identity verification, 2) security and privacy and 3) proof of delivery.
To fully and effectively communicate in an email message, the sender must have three message format options (text, audio and visual), plus some number of attachments. This is because in human communications, when two parties are not physically together, the exchange can involve only these three dimensions (i.e., smell and touch being the missing dimensions). It has been proven that this type of three-dimension message configuration has the following value and effectiveness for each of the three; 7% to the words (text), 38% to “how” they are audibly spoken (e.g., intonation, cadence, modulation . . . ) and 55% to the body language (the visual) of the speaker.
So, with a maximum of 100% effectiveness as a possibility, a text-only email message can be no more than 7% as effective as a comparable visual (video) message, with sound. An audio-only email message can be no more than 45% as effective as a comparable visual message, with sound. The “benchmark” against which all remote communications are valued in effectiveness are based on a visual message with sound that allows the recipient to hear the words spoken and see the speaker's body language (e.g., facial expressions, posture, hand motions, head motion and so on). Yet, even if 100% effective communication options were possible today in most popular message exchanges, many senders and recipients would be reluctant to use them for fear that such crisp, clear and concise messages might fall into improper hands due to lesser security and greater vulnerability of popular, public-Internet-based email systems.